Hunting The Paper Tiger 97: Are Algorithms Killing Our Communities?

We are overwhelmed by asks.

Watch this. Buy this. Sign up for this. Show up here. Comment there. Subscribe. Click. Care. Respond. Share.

It makes sense that we check out. It makes sense that we scroll past and tell ourselves we will come back later. But passively scrolling is not doing nothing. We are still spending time, energy, and attention somewhere.

And our attention is not neutral.

Algorithms are not neutral. They are built to keep us watching, clicking, scrolling, buying, and coming back. They are very good at taking our time and attention. They are not very good at helping us build the communities, conversations, creative practices, and real-life connections we say we want.

That is not an accident. Social platforms and search engines are built to keep us inside their ecosystems. The longer we stay, the more they can sell, track, recommend, interrupt, and profit.

So when we scroll past the work we care about and keep feeding the platforms that drain us, we are not doing nothing. We are helping train what comes next.

The future is being trained by our attention.

You are not just a consumer. You are a shaper of the future. Every click, like, share, comment, purchase, RSVP, no-show, class attended, event skipped, email forwarded, or post ignored teaches the world what to show us more of.

This is true online, and it is true offline. Staying home and scrolling is a vote. So is going to the community event, cooking dinner with friends, reading a book, taking a walk, showing up to class, or making your work.

We are not only choosing what we consume. We are choosing what kind of lives, communities, and futures we are practicing into being.

Seth Godin wrote this week about blogs, traffic, and Google, naming what many independent creators have been feeling for years: we cannot count on platforms to reliably send people our way.

Traffic is not community.

A click is not a relationship. A view is not support. A follower is not the same as someone who shows up.

This matters because so much of the internet has trained us to confuse visibility with connection. But being seen for a second in someone’s feed is not the same as being in relationship. It is not the same as trust. It is not the same as a room full of people who showed up on purpose.

Big platforms are not built to protect the work, gatherings, conversations, and communities we care about. They are built to keep people inside their own systems for their own financial gain.

That means we cannot build everything we care about on borrowed attention.

Social media can help people find us, but it is not the community. It is rented space.

A direct relationship happens in places where people choose to come closer to the work: mailing lists, websites, and private community platforms. These are spaces where people can hear from us directly, not only when an algorithm decides to show them something.

This is one of the reasons I built the Struktur Society community on Circle.so. It needed a home. Not another feed. Not another comment section floating inside a platform built for ads and distraction. A real home for the work, the conversations, and the people gathering around them.

Struktur Society is a private, paywalled community. You have to choose to enter it. Once inside, the conversations are not being pushed around by social media algorithms. They are not designed for public performance. They are not sitting in an open feed waiting to be scraped, ranked, or turned into someone else’s content.

It is closer to being invited into someone’s living room than being dropped into Times Square.

That matters because not every conversation belongs in public. Communities need places where people can think out loud, ask real questions, be messy, connect, and build trust without feeling like every word is being optimized, watched, or mined.

That does not mean we stop using social platforms. It means we stop confusing them with home.

If you care about the work, do not just follow it. Get closer to it.

Subscribe to the mailing list. Visit the website. Join the community space. Reply to the email. Forward something to a real person. Go directly to the source.

These actions may seem small, but they help move us out of passive consumption and back into relationship.

Good work does not automatically get found. Good events do not automatically fill. Good ideas do not automatically spread.

Most of what reaches us does not reach us by accident. There are big marketing dollars behind it. Ads. PR. Teams. Repetition. Platforms pushing it into our feeds until it feels familiar.

But the work of our friends, colleagues, neighbors, artists, teachers, writers, small business owners, organizers, and community builders usually does not have that kind of money behind it.

So it needs people.

If there are no big marketing dollars behind it, the people who care have to help carry it.

People sharing with other people is how small work finds its way.

Quiet support is real. It can be kind. It can matter emotionally. But quiet support does not always help new work grow.

When we see someone building something we care about, a class, a business, a book, a gathering, a practice, a project, a community, they need us to leave a signal.

Like the post. Answer the poll. Leave a comment. Forward the email. Share the invitation. Buy the ticket early. Bring a friend. Show up. Come back.

Don’t be stingy with your likes. They’re free.

This is not about becoming an unpaid marketing team. It is about understanding that small actions are not always small. A like helps something rise. A comment helps more people see it. A share helps it travel. A purchase helps it continue. A body in the room changes the room.

Support is not just what we feel. Support is what we do.

If we are building something, we have a responsibility too.

We cannot assume people know how to help. We have to ask clearly, not desperately, manipulatively, or with shame. Just clearly.

Here is what helps.
Here is why it matters.
Here is the next small action.

Asking is not begging. Asking is educating. Asking is leadership.

People may love what we are doing and still not understand what actually moves it forward. They may not realize that liking a post, answering a poll, forwarding an invitation, buying early, or walking into the room can change what becomes possible.

If we want people to show up energetically, financially, socially, or physically, we have to tell them what showing up looks like.

That is part of building something new. We are not only making the work. We are helping people understand how to be in relationship with it.

Community does not happen because people like the idea of it. Community happens because people participate.

People need to see other people taking part. They need to see the conversation happening, the room filling, the comments coming in, the invitations moving, the energy building. That is how people know there is something alive to join.

When I ran the Struktur Event creative conference, it worked because people showed up for the conversation and stayed to keep having it.

The room becomes real because people enter it. The work becomes real because people respond to it. The community becomes real because people return.

If we want community now, we have to show up for it now. We cannot assume these spaces will keep existing just because we are glad they are there.

Things we love are disappearing quietly. Small spaces. Local gatherings. Live music venues. Independent writing. Creative practices. Human conversations. Places to connect. Places to make things. Places to be more than a user, viewer, buyer, or data point.

Too often, these things are being replaced by tech-driven, algorithmic culture that keeps us isolated, passive, and unwell. We may not be able to redesign the whole system today, but we can stop pretending our attention is meaningless.

New work grows when people do more than admire it. It grows when people help it get seen, funded, shared, attended, and carried forward.

So leave a signal.

Like the post. Forward the email. Buy the ticket. Answer the poll. Share the invitation. Bring a friend. Show up to class. Go to the gathering. Make the thing. Return to the room.

The future is being trained by our attention, so let’s be less passive with it.

We are not just consumers. We are shapers of the future.

And the things we care about need us to act like it.

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